Boa Mistura | Athens

Boa Mistura | Athens

BoaMistura is a crew of Madrid based artists who decorate public spaces around the world with imaginative ways. From graffiti and mural painting, to graphic design and illustration, Boa Mistura want to give the world its colour back. 5 heads, 10 hands, just one heart. From Madrid, Boa Mistura is a multidisciplinary crew.

It has been formed by 5 graffiti artists with diferent education, from Civil Engineering to Fine Arts, Architecture or Publicity. 10 hands, 5 heads, just one heart. They are a multidisciplinary team with roots in graffiti art.

As they quote “Born in late 2001, Madrid, Spain. We develop our work mainly in the public space. We have carried out projects in South Africa, USA, UK, Brazil, Mexico, Georgia, Chile, Algeria, Norway, Kenya, China, Serbia or Panamá. We were 15 years old when we first met, while painting the walls of our neighborhood.

Our headquarter is in Madrid, but we spend the day from here to there, living among paint buckets, computers and ping-pong matches. We love what we do. We understand our work, as a tool to transform the street and to create bonds between people. We feel a responsibility with the city and time we are living in.”

About 70 km from Athens, is placed the Ritsona refugee camp. The place welcomes more than 800 refugees from various countries in war, mainly Syria and Iraq. Together with Maidan Tent, we’ve been working on the creation of a public square in the refugee camp. A project that could be replicable in other camps.

These places were conceived as a temporary solution while the conflict is still active. Unfortunately, wars don’t understand time, and the reality is that there are people who have been waiting here for more than two years. Years full of uncertainty about their future. We feel that it is time to rethink the refugee camps, stop thinking them as nomads and equip them with infrastructure to rebuild their identity.

In Ritsona, the vast majority of refugees come from Syria and Iraq, so we have worked inspired by the girihs, the geometric forms of Islamic art, to reinforce the sense of belonging to a place from which they were ripped off, but which they carry with them in their identity.

Hopefully, not too long, Ritsona is an abandoned place. Until then, this work belongs to all the refugees who inhabit it. It is already part of your identity. That of their past, their uncertain present and their future.

The project has been made thanks to the support of PPG, who supplied us with the painting and to MPG, who provided funds for the materials.